RE: Sir Patrick Vallance on Sky News9 Mar 2021 17:35
Avacta's tumour microenvironment activated drug conjugates (TMAC) are a ground-breaking new form of cancer immunotherapy, co-invented with Tufts University Medical School, combining Affimers with chemotherapies in a single drug using a linker that is designed to only release the chemotherapy in the tumour microenvironment. This allows extremely potent chemotherapies, too potent to be given to patients systemically, to be combined with Affimer immune-checkpoint therapies.
In order to test the TMAC linker in humans for the first time, a standard-of-care chemotherapy called doxorubicin has been modified with the linker rendering it inactive and harmless until the linker is cleaved in the tumour releasing active doxorubicin. Doxorubicin has well documented safety issues limiting its dosing, and also limiting the patient sub-group that can be treated. Despite these issues, the global doxorubicin market is valued at $910m and is expected to reach $1.4bn by the end of 2025[1]. Avacta's TMAC linker has been shown to increase the maximum tolerated dose of doxorubicin by a factor of six in a pre-clinical study in mice.